Review: 'Red Maple' @ Capital Rep, 1/29/19

From left, James Lloyd Reynolds, Elizabeth Meadows Rouse, Yvonne Perry and Oliver Wadsworth in the world premiere of "Red Maple" at Capital repertory Theatre in Albany. (Photo by Richard Lovrich/The Rep)

From left, James Lloyd Reynolds, Elizabeth Meadows Rouse, Yvonne Perry and Oliver Wadsworth in the world premiere of "Red Maple" at Capital repertory Theatre in Albany. (Photo by Richard Lovrich/The Rep)

Photo: Richard Lovrich, Capital Repertory Theatre

Photo: Richard Lovrich, Capital Repertory Theatre

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From left, James Lloyd Reynolds, Elizabeth Meadows Rouse, Yvonne Perry and Oliver Wadsworth in the world premiere of "Red Maple" at Capital repertory Theatre in Albany. (Photo by Richard Lovrich/The Rep)

From left, James Lloyd Reynolds, Elizabeth Meadows Rouse, Yvonne Perry and Oliver Wadsworth in the world premiere of "Red Maple" at Capital repertory Theatre in Albany. (Photo by Richard Lovrich/The Rep)

Photo: Richard Lovrich, Capital Repertory Theatre

Review: 'Red Maple' @ Capital Rep, 1/29/19

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ALBANY — "Red Maple" is a triumph for Capital Repertory Theatre, its play-development program and local actor-author David Bunce.

The play, a rapid-fire comedy with deep reserves of heart, is getting its world premiere at The Rep after being discovered during the theater's 2017 Next Act! New Play Summit. As a 15-point timeline in the program takes pains to point out, although Bunce is a popular figure in area theater circles as actor and director, having spent 27 years with the former New York State Theatre Institute, his local ties didn't help "Red Maple" during the Next Act process. Read in successive selection rounds by committees unaware of its author, the play rose to the top three, out of more than 450 submissions, and ultimately was offered a full production.

As directed by Margaret Hall, The Rep's assistant artistic director, whose portfolio of responsibilities includes managing the Next Act festival, "Red Maple" feels familiar and immediately relatable as well as lively and vital. The latter attributes are largely a credit to Bunce's zippy dialogue, which pings the funny bone several times a minute, and to a five-member cast that, under Hall's supremely assured direction, manages a deft balance of humor and sincerity.

A quick plot-and-theme overview does not make "Red Maple" seem especially promising: It's a midlife-crisis play that brings together a pair of straight, white, upper-middle-class couples in one of the couples' tasteful condos for two hours of soul-baring comedy. And the ground Bunce covers is predictable and well-trodden: demanding but ultimately unfulfilling careers, marriages in need of rejuvenation after decades together, spousal communication and the lack thereof, empty-nesters adjusting to the fledglings having flown the coop but still needing parental support, the secrets we keep and the effects of those we share, and existential questions as profound and yet as clichéd as, "Is this all there is?"

Every bit of this is executed with such aplomb, by a cast who seem genuinely energized and excited to be creating a brand-new play, that the familiarity actually works in favor of "Red Maple." The eponymous tree is a majestic specimen that one of the foursome, Robert (James Lloyd Reynolds), spots during his commute to a local university, his home for many years as a literature professor. Mindful of literary symbols, Robert decides he's the tree: Like his life, he says, it's impressive and complete if viewed from one angle, but a closer look reveals longstanding if hidden damage.

And so he's taken drastic action to change the status quo, which he confides to his best friend, John (Oliver Wadsworth), a photographer, who is hosting a dinner party with his wife, Karen (Yvonne Perry), a career woman whose unproductive but needy boss keeps interrupting the evening with phone calls. Rounding out the foursome is Robert's strong, no-nonsense wife, Stephanie (Elizabeth Meadows Rouse), for whom marriage to a man of ideas has meant decades of being the practical one who gets things done.

John, unable to keep his friend's dramatic secret, soon spills it, and the arrival of an unexpected visitor (Julia Knitel) makes the evening — acted out on a handsome set by Brian Prather, with lighting and an Albany-skyline projection by Rob Denton — get further messy. The neatly knit writing of Bunce's first act unravels to a degree in the second; in some cases, it's obvious which threads he's going to pull, and in others you feel like he didn't know what to do and just snipped it off.

But "Red Maple" is new, and part of the purpose of a world premiere is to give the author time to tweak until opening night, and then return to the page with his perspective reframed by having seen the play in front of audiences for several weeks. Given its subject matter, small cast, single set and other limited production demands, "Red Maple" seems sure to have future productions; its humor and humanity make it a natural fit for theaters nationwide, first at the professional level like The Rep and for years with community troupes.

Would that future productions have a cast as good as this first one. Three of the five are familiar to audiences of The Rep, especially Perry and Wadsworth, and together they make a near-perfect ensemble, carrying off both Bunce's hijinks — a nod to fight choreographer David Girard — and his more earnest inclinations with elan.

Without psychologizing too much, Bunce, who is roughly the same age as the central couples, seems likely to have been inspired by professional turmoil in his own life. First NYSTI, based at Russell Sage College in Troy, was shut down in 2010 after a scandal unrelated to him, and, though he became part of the next iteration, the Theatre Institute at Sage, he was among the victims last year of layoffs there, too. Such upheaval after three decades as a working theater artist must have been unsettling. It's a testament to his resilience and creativity that — whether despite the setbacks, because of them, or both — he was able to conceive and bring to life something as worthwhile as "Red Maple."